Blogger.com - Lesson learned the hard way

[andheresjohnny]

I had several blogs hosted on Blogger.com. Collectively they netted around $300 per month via affiliate links.

Yesterday, about an hour after my last blog posts, I logged back in to complete my postings for the day. At that time I find that every one of my blogs have been deleted.

To add insult to injury ... I also find that several of my blogger URLs have been reused by the same user. This person slapped a spammy page with his own affiliate link on these URLs. And he picked the high-traffic blogs too.

All of this took place in about the span of an hour.

So now he is enjoying all the traffic that comes with having first-page listings in the SERPs.

Though there's no way to prove it, it sure appears that someone from the blogger support team deleted my blogs and immediately swiped the URLs.

Lesson Learned -- Do Not ... Ever ... use a free public service to host a money-generating site.

B*stards.

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Oops .. it appears I may have posted this in the wrong area. I apologize if that is true.

[Jarodboy]

Everyday i think about that but unfornately i do not have enough revenue to pay for a host :s

[Pammer]

isn't blogger is from google company.... hey have u compaleted about that.....

[T0PS3O]

That sucks. My blog is still with Blogger and I have plenty of unused hosting space. Just never got round to moving it. Whilst it's not making significant money I wouldn't want to loose the content.

Pushed this up a few places on my priority list.

[Pammer]

simply you add some of funny video or educational video like :--

<object codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=" classid="clsid27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" height="230" width="549"><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><br /><br /><br /><br /><embed src="http://www.miniclip.com/Flash/gamesroom.swf" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" menu="false" height="230" width="549"><br /></object>


then is anyone hacked your sites you will prove by redirecting or making your video on your blogs. if u know some simple programming.

"http://www.miniclip.com/Flash/gamesroom.swf" >change> to> "http://www.your_redirecting_video.com/Flash/gamesroom.swf"

[furbs]

You try emailing Blogger (or would it be Google) Support?

[andheresjohnny]

Yes, I emailed Blogger Support after I realized what had happened. A few hours later I received some "autorespond" email asking me to view their FAQ ... which I had already done.

Following the instructions in their email, I replied with a request that they manually review my issue. We'll see what happens.

I don't expect to get those URLs back.

[andheresjohnny]

After thinking about this some more .. I believe it could be easy for someone to obtain a good, established Blogger URL.

All you need do is:

1. Use the SERPS to locate some high-ranking Blogspot URLs.
2. Create a program that pings these IPs at some set interval. If not found, immediately send an email or some other notification to yourself.
3. Report these blogs as SPAM/SPLOG .. whatever. Easy to do from any Blogger page.
4. If you get a notification from step 2, immediately login to Blogger and swipe that URL.
5. Enjoy the instant traffic.

[Pammer]

why we get "Report these blogs as SPAM/SPLOG .. whatever. Easy to do from any Blogger page." ????

[andheresjohnny]

Go to any bogger site and at the top right is a "flag" hyperlink. You can click on this and report the site as SPAM or having objectionable content.

[Pammer]

yeah, i know... but how to you saying... "Enjoy the instant traffic." if i report that ....Report these blogs as SPAM/SPLOG

[andheresjohnny]

If you can get a high-traffic Blogspot site shut down (by reporting it) , and then be able to grab that URL for yourself (by logging into Blogger and re-creating it), then you will instantly have a site that has traffic already going to it.

You then just slap on any relevant affiliate links, products, adsense, etc. and start collecting the money.

[mdvaldosta]

I had to blogs deleted from there too, they were'nt even high traffic either. They were deleted because, I think, I put 3 links to my websites on the sidebar. Douchebags.

[Blogmaster]

not the first time that that's happened.

[andheresjohnny]

Thanks for the link Blogmaster... interesting reading. Especially the part about interlinking.

I did have my blogs interlinking. This was mainly so I could traverse them without having to type each URL individually. And really, how much SERP advantage will there be to linking Blogspot to Blogspot? And their templates even come with a default "Links" section.

It just looks very suspicious that my URLs were taken minutes after the blogs were deleted.

[MorgansMom]

The same thing happened to me. I had 4 blogs on blogger and they were all taken by the same person with the same spammy links. I was so pissed, but I knew the risk of having them on blogger cause I had read about this before, so I mostly blame myself for being a procrastinator.

I'm hosting with asmallorange (the $5 a month package - can anybody NOT afford this?) so I started my highest ranking blog from scratch again. If anybody is making $5 a month or more from their blogspot blog, get the hell outta there!! Spend that >$5 wisely and protect your hard work.

[Blogmaster]

Did you guys see the page where they incinuate that bloggers forget to log into the right blog and such? It's somewhere on my blog, absolutely rediculous. I'm not saying there isn't a lot of problems happening, afterall check spammiest blog hosts, but I believe they have gone overboard and gotten the wrong ones from time to time. Like said before me: never let someone else control your content.

This is their answer: http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=656

[websiteideas]

This is why I spend the 10 bucks for a domain name, and install a script like Wordpress on my own hosting account.

[chachi]

well, for anyone that wants to migrate off of blogger.com, Wordpress 2.x has a really great import tool built into it that grabs all of your posts and comments from blogger. Blogger is free and there is probably some benefit to being on blogger.com, but it just ran too slow for me. Plus, I think WP blogs rank much more easily with all of the stock features.

[andheresjohnny]

When I started these blogs I never really thought they would have amounted to much. But then through marketing they began to pick up and generate some monthly income.

I too had read through some threads here at DP warning about keeping these things on Blogger. I had considered moving everything over to a regular hosting account but decided against it. Not because of cost, but rather I didn't know how to do it without losing all the links and PR I had built up.

I'm very unhappy about having to build them from scratch (I've already registered new domains). But what really pisses me off is that I have to compete against sites that were stolen from me.